


The Wrong Man in the Right Place

by NervousAsexual



Category: Half-Life
Genre: First Kiss, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-04
Updated: 2019-01-04
Packaged: 2019-10-03 23:38:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17293481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NervousAsexual/pseuds/NervousAsexual
Summary: When he pulls Gordon off the train to Nova Prospekt Barney finds a moment of safety in the storm.





	The Wrong Man in the Right Place

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by[ "What Beer?"](https://www.deviantart.com/steive/art/What-beer-141274106%22) by Steive.  
>  

Thought I was having a stroke first time I saw him. I mean, after all this time what are the odds that he'd walk into the station at City 17? That it'd be my shift? That I'd even be looking at the monitors when he strolled up to the Nova Prospekt train like it was a Sunday picnic?  
  
But he did and I was and hell, stranger things have happened. I hit the buzzer and booked it down to the platform, thinking all the while how I was gonna get there and he was gonna be gone again, or it was gonna be some other redhead nerd with huge glasses, or I was gonna smell burnt toast and pass out on the floor, but no. I opened up the door and there he was, staring around with his big ol' eyes and his perfect poker face. He looked exactly as he did twenty years ago. I was glad for the mask at that point, because if anybody could have seen my face at that moment it would have blown my cover right there. It was him. There was no mistakin' it.  
  
"You," I told him, and thank hell for voice distortion too. "Come with me." I half expected somebody to call me out on it--hadn't the last guy got pulled off the train too? who did I think I was, depriving the Combine of more stalker meat?--but nobody said a thing and Gordon just followed me through the hall to the interrogation rooms. When I said "Get in," he got in. When the other metrocop--we were on duty together for weeks that last year and I never did learn his name--pushed him over against the wall he stood over against the wall. That made me nervous too--sure, him not saying nothing was normal, but what did they do to him that made him jump when someone told him to?  
  
"Need any help with this one?" the other cop asked.  
  
"No," I told him. "I'm good."  
  
He took my word for it and I couldn't believe he couldn't see me shaking all over, but hey, maybe he thought it was excitement.  
  
"Get back," I told him as the other cop cleared out. He was just standing there looking at the bloodstains on the floor, newer ones, still fresh and bright and sticky when you walked on them.  
  
"Gonna need me some privacy for this," I said, more for the cameras than anything else. Sounded like overcompensating when it came out of my mouth, but what else was this job, anyway, and I was so far behind on my beating quota I could probably stand to talk big. I put my hands on the keyboard and goddamn they were shaking now, but I managed to get the cameras to retract and now it was just me and him and now I was really tangled up in my thoughts. He didn't look like he'd aged a day in the last two decades. How was that even possible? We were the same age and every day made me feel another year older. All the scientists left from Black Mesa were old men now, Alyx Vance was the same age I was when the world went to shit, and here was Gordon still looking fresh out of grad school.  
  
Would he even recognize me when I took the mask off?  
  
Shit. Probably not. I fingered the latches holding it in place and tried to think. Too bad we hadn't set up a secret code all those years ago. Shoulda said, "Hey, Gordon, just in case some ugly aliens turn up and take over the world, let's set up a code phrase so if we run across one another we'll know the other didn't get body-snatched." He probably would have gone for it, too.  
  
"Now," I told him, because I couldn't think of anything else, and as I took off the mask my voice sounded like my own again, "about that beer I owe you."  
  
For a moment he just stood there and I kicked myself--good job, Barney, you blew it--so I added, "It's me, Gordon. Barney? From Black Mesa?" And that was when a big goofy grin spread across his face and warmed that chilly interrogation room right up, and he started bouncing, that funny, happy hop he did when something went his way.  
  
He did know me after all, and with that bouncing I knew it was definitely him. Now I felt relief on top of all that shaky stress. I smiled too, first time in a long time, and he came right up to me and before I could react he put his arms around me.  
  
I tensed back up at that. What a weird feeling it was, getting a hug. It'd been years since somebody last touched me who wasn't trying to kick my ass, and he was holding on so tight. Felt good, though, when I finally let it. Made the world a little brighter, just for that moment.  
  
"Good to see you too, buddy." I hugged him back, and it was just as awkward as before, but at the same time it felt like reaching back in time to before it all went to hell in a handbasket.  
  
When he finally stepped back I needed to sit down--wasn't just everything happening at once, hadn't slept well in years and all this excitement made me tired. I leaned up against the metal table and looked at him and he looked at me.  
  
I knew he was seeing the exact opposite of what I did when I looked at him. He might have looked just like he did back at Black Mesa, but the years hadn't exactly been kind to me. I watched him look over the metrocop suit, the scruff--who would ever believe I used to shave daily?--the wrinkles I knew had formed at the corners of my eyes and mouth. He stopped and got closer for a look at the patch of hair missing on the side of my head. I wanted to tell him how I lost that in the early years, got grazed by a stray shot from those energy rifles, you can't even hardly see the scar now but the hair never grew back. I didn't even know where to start.  
  
Even his glasses looked like they were still new. Everything had changed, I had changed, and he was exactly as I remembered him. It scared the hell out of me.  
  
"Who would have guessed?" I asked him. "What are the chances of us crossing paths like this?"  
  
He made a cirle of his hand. Zero. Goose-egg. By all rights it should have been impossible. But here we were. Incredible.  
  
*Barney.* He signed my name the way he always had, the letter B turning into the sign for "brown."  
  
"Yeah. Isn't it wild?"  
  
*Can I.*  
  
I waited for more--still a little rusty on the signing, didn't matter, I'd get by--but it didn't come.  
  
"Can you..." I prompted him. He frowned like he was just starting to realize where he was, some blood-spattered interrogation room just yards away from the train that was meant to take him to Nova Prospekt, and he gave a sigh and flapped his arms against his side. "Look, we don't got a lot of time. Hang on a minute and I'll call up Kleiner, see what he wants to..."  
  
But as I started to turn back toward the monitors he put out a hand to stop me.  
  
*Can I kiss you?* he signed.  
  
Now I was really sure I was having a stroke. I must have misunderstood somehow. The sign for "kiss" looked just like the sign for "more," except I didn't know what that sentence was supposed to mean in that context, and he puckered up when he signed it, and...  
  
I don't know what my expression must have been because he looked alarmed and shook his head. *Sorry. Awkward.*  
  
"No." God, I was the one making this awkward. "I didn't mean... It's just it's been years and... Hell, Gordon, with me? You can find somebody better to kiss."  
  
He shrugged and gave me an awkward tight-lipped smile. *Want kiss you.*  
  
Well... shit.  
  
*Sorry.*  
  
I couldn't get over how much he still looked like the Gordon I knew in Black Mesa. All this time and here he was like nothing had changed. It felt like I was dreaming, like anything was possible. "I didn't say you couldn't."  
  
He gave me a questioning look and I didn't know what else to say, so I just shrugged. None of this made sense--what else was new? nothing had made sense for twenty years--and it wasn't like I hadn't thought of him, maybe not like that, but maybe that was because you don't think about friends like that, you don't want to screw up a perfectly good friendship...  
  
When I pulled out of that tailspin of anxiety he'd stepped closer and was still coming. He was right there, I could touch him if I wanted, but I was shaking again and he looked like the last twenty years hadn't even left a dent on him. He was scruffy, but he was always scruffy, he looked clean and warm and comfortable and everything I wanted to be. You wouldn't even think, just looking at him, that this was the same guy I'd seen dragged off by grunts when the world went all to pieces.  
  
He stepped up against me and he was so close I could smell him, like coolant and sterile labs and the burning smell of the Xen relay. Hell if I knew what to do with my hands, what did people usually do when...  
  
He took my hands and even though I could barely feel him through the gloves he squeezed them. He leaned in and I leaned back almost without thinking of it and his cheek brushed against mine and his lips found mine and I could have sworn my heart stopped right there.  
  
For a minute there it was almost enough to forget everything that had happened. This wasn't an interrogation cell. I hadn't spent years playing fascist cop to innocent people. We weren't pressed against each other an arm's length from a massive bloodstain on the floor.  
  
But we were and I had and it was, and although he was the first thing in a long time that didn't taste like ashes in my mouth I realized he really hadn't changed. Don't ask me how I knew. I just knew somehow that Gordon was still twenty-seven and somehow he'd stayed frozen in time as I'd watched year after year pass me by.  
  
I should have stopped right then--if he really was still the same age he'd been at Black Mesa he was young enough to be my son--but I needed that minute. He was gentle and he was there and I was so damn desperate for some tenderness it seemed like a miracle I hadn't fallen apart already. I closed my eyes and I kissed him back. All he was doing was kissing me and holding my hands in his but it felt safe. It felt like coming home.  
  
He really was going to save us all, I thought, and I let us just have the moment.  
  
In the next room there was a crack and a scream and that was enough to tear us apart. Brought tears to my eyes, if I'm being honest. I was more tired than I had been before I saw him out there and I felt like a plant wilting in the cold.  
  
"We gotta go before they get suspicious," I told him. Part of me wanted him back against me, wanted him to make me feel like the world hadn't come apart after all, but I had a job to do. Had to get him to Kleiner. Had to keep CP off his back long enough for him to become the big damn hero we all knew he could be.  
  
He blinked at me. Maybe he'd forgotten where we were too.  
  
I went to the console and patched us through to Kleiner's lab. I was shaking again. It kind of pissed me off.  
  
Kleiner was taking his sweet time answering and I realized I was still gonna have to get through the day after this. I'd have to calm down and work my shift and by the time I got back to the lab Gordon would probably be gone again.  
  
"Yes, Barney, what is it?" Kleiner demanded when he finally patched in. "I'm in the middle of a critical test."  
  
It wasn't me he was angry at, not really, but I absorbed his anger anyway. This should have be an incredible day. It was supposed to give us the inspiration to push on to the revolution we needed. Instead I wasn't sure how much longer I could keep doing all this.  
  
I looked up at the screen and tried to form the words to describe what had happened and couldn't. What was I supposed to say? What was I supposed to do?  
  
And then Gordon's fingers laced together with mine and I could feel him there at my shoulder. Who would've thought, huh? Who would have dreamed after all this time, in a place like this, with a guy like him? This wasn't how I'd expected it to go, but it sure was happening.  
  
"Sorry, Doc," I said, and I squeezed Gordon's hand in mine. "But look who's here."


End file.
